I remember Charlotte Despard
noting that English school inspectors were loathe to call to working class
districts in the afternoons as the children would be so drained and exhausted
from hunger as to make them almost incapable of response - one of the arguments
mobilised for instituting an effective Poor Law in the first place was to
eradicate this type of gross want.
English Chartists by and large deplored the workhouses but there was a more ambivalent reception to their introduction in Ireland with many reformers (Mary Ann McCracken for instance) welcoming at least the safety net they provided; Ireland being hitherto absented from the Elizabethan Poor Law provisions which prevailed in England.
Daniel O' Connell and the Repealers were initially muted in their criticism when the 1834 English Poor Law Act was extended to Ireland four years later, broadly giving it their sanction, but admonishing the provisions whereby families were forcibly separated; it being 'particularly grevious' in the Irish context according to them.
O' Connell also felt that the forcible levying of poor law rates would undermine the 'long cherished' spirit of Christian charity which prevailed in the country - the idea being that if beggars were bona fide paupers eligible for workhouse relief then the otherwise charitable donors would feel less impelled to "give freely" what they are now being taxed to provide.
You can see in all this the tension between the old "big house" semi-feudalised attitudes to poor relief (O' Connell himself being a generous patron of his more needy tenants in the style of the old Gaelic chieftains) vs. the growing expectations of what role the state should reasonably play in alleviating social problems.
But in these early days there was as yet no inclination of what role the workhouse and poor law system could play in affecting a revolution in land tenure when the crisis of famine emerged in 1845 - the notorious "Gregory Clause" to the Poor Law Reform Act of 1847 stipulated that holders of a mere 1/4 acre or more of land weren't entitled to any relief inside or outside the workhouse thereby forcing countless thousands to either starve or quit the land.
Thus the Poor Law system was used as a lever to enact far-ranging land reforms displacing the "unviable" small tenants who often rotated the land collectively among themselves via old derbfine customs in favour of large-scale consolidated farms run by landlords who could afford to mechanise and upgrade in converting arable to pasture.
Steam shipping had drastically lowered cross-channel carrying costs of livestock and Corn Law Repeal was widely expected to lower the cost of grain - the last thing Irish landlords wanted in such a trading environment were tens of thousands of corn & spud-based miniature agrarian collectives claiming ownership in the soil via hereditary customary rights.
Best to offload them to Five Points at a nominal sum before the logic of Fintan Lalor's redistribution schemes caught hold, or better yet have their acres transferred free of charge while the soil's tillers perish en masse along with their intolerable 'claims' of inheritance.
Apart from introducing a new genre of lime-pit archaeology Poor Law workhouses over here were notable for their insane blend of rigid Benthamite utilitarianism and Clapham moralism as fever-stricken inmates suffering from malnutrition were still obliged to adhere to the compulsory work regime;
"I'd rather die than crack stones for a ten hours a day" -
- being one memorable fragment left to us by the Folklore Commission.
English Chartists by and large deplored the workhouses but there was a more ambivalent reception to their introduction in Ireland with many reformers (Mary Ann McCracken for instance) welcoming at least the safety net they provided; Ireland being hitherto absented from the Elizabethan Poor Law provisions which prevailed in England.
Daniel O' Connell and the Repealers were initially muted in their criticism when the 1834 English Poor Law Act was extended to Ireland four years later, broadly giving it their sanction, but admonishing the provisions whereby families were forcibly separated; it being 'particularly grevious' in the Irish context according to them.
O' Connell also felt that the forcible levying of poor law rates would undermine the 'long cherished' spirit of Christian charity which prevailed in the country - the idea being that if beggars were bona fide paupers eligible for workhouse relief then the otherwise charitable donors would feel less impelled to "give freely" what they are now being taxed to provide.
You can see in all this the tension between the old "big house" semi-feudalised attitudes to poor relief (O' Connell himself being a generous patron of his more needy tenants in the style of the old Gaelic chieftains) vs. the growing expectations of what role the state should reasonably play in alleviating social problems.
But in these early days there was as yet no inclination of what role the workhouse and poor law system could play in affecting a revolution in land tenure when the crisis of famine emerged in 1845 - the notorious "Gregory Clause" to the Poor Law Reform Act of 1847 stipulated that holders of a mere 1/4 acre or more of land weren't entitled to any relief inside or outside the workhouse thereby forcing countless thousands to either starve or quit the land.
Thus the Poor Law system was used as a lever to enact far-ranging land reforms displacing the "unviable" small tenants who often rotated the land collectively among themselves via old derbfine customs in favour of large-scale consolidated farms run by landlords who could afford to mechanise and upgrade in converting arable to pasture.
Steam shipping had drastically lowered cross-channel carrying costs of livestock and Corn Law Repeal was widely expected to lower the cost of grain - the last thing Irish landlords wanted in such a trading environment were tens of thousands of corn & spud-based miniature agrarian collectives claiming ownership in the soil via hereditary customary rights.
Best to offload them to Five Points at a nominal sum before the logic of Fintan Lalor's redistribution schemes caught hold, or better yet have their acres transferred free of charge while the soil's tillers perish en masse along with their intolerable 'claims' of inheritance.
Apart from introducing a new genre of lime-pit archaeology Poor Law workhouses over here were notable for their insane blend of rigid Benthamite utilitarianism and Clapham moralism as fever-stricken inmates suffering from malnutrition were still obliged to adhere to the compulsory work regime;
"I'd rather die than crack stones for a ten hours a day" -
- being one memorable fragment left to us by the Folklore Commission.
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